Friday, June 29, 2012

1. Here's Jess Nevins's annotations to the excellent League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Century 2009 (Alan Moore's the best writer in comics, and it's not even close). Sample (SPOILER SPOILER):

Norton, Mina and Orlando are walking into Platform 13, from Eva Ibbotson’s The Secret of Platform 13. In the novel Platform 13 in King’s Cross Station leads to another world.

And, yes, the similarities between Ibbotson and J.K. Rowling’s Platform 9 3/4 has been noted before, though no one seriously believes that Rowling plagiarized or stole from Ibbotson. In Ibbotson’s words, “I think we all borrow from each other as writers.”

There’s a certain character that made all the headlines the other week when the comic went on sale in England. And while I am in awe at the tricks Moore and O’Neill use to avoid any trademark or copyright issues concerning him, there is a name they use, found, scorched, in the grounds of a magical school. But rather than having the initials HP on his folder, instead there is the name “Will Stanton.”

Will was the lead in the second The Dark Is Rising novel from 1973, the seventh son of a seventh son who discovers his wizarding heritage on his eleventh birthday, and must collect six “signs” to help fight The Dark. Yes, comparisons have been made. What this means, despite all the newspaper headlines, it may be a very different children’s wizarding character who is actually portrayed on the page…

2. Gawker writer tries out new matchmaking site, gets fixed up with a Gawker writer who works a few computers over.

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